Laptop vs Desktop

I just bought a laptop in November and have found that editing on a laptop is challenging. It depends on how the screen is placed as to what the pix looks like. Or, if I scoot down in my chair the screen darkens, if I sit up higher it lightens. What do most of you use for your editing and do you have any tips?

Thanks,

Sandi Winton
Redbud Photography
www.redbudphotography.com

Sandi,

I have a Mac laptop but I now have a desktop on order with the cinema HD display. I am really hoping it is better. The other issue I have had is that sometimes there are "hotspots" on photos on my screen that don't really exist.

The laptop doesn't have near the storage either.

Peter

Hi Sandi, The laptop is great for field use. I take it with me on shoots and download at night in my RV. High speed is available almost everywhere today in coffee shops , Libraries etc. and it also allows me to keep up on my correspondance That way everything is cleaned up and ready to go the next day. However I don't use my laptop for editing for the same reasons you described. I use my desktop to do all my editing. The way prices have come down you can get a great desktop with a lot of capacitly very resonable.

Sandi,

For truly accurate image editing, a calibrated and profiled large display is indespensible. I suggest purchasing a stand-alone monitor and attaching it to your laptop. If your laptop is reasonably robust in terms of processor speed and RAM, this setup will work fine. You might also consider a large external hard drive to connect to your laptop to mitigate the storage issue.

-PB

I agree with Preston. If you must use the laptop for editing, get a separate monitor and calibrate it. We avoid image editing on laptops, but sometimes a location shoot demands it. Our lab has a 100% success rate in spotting images we've edited on laptops rather than back at the studio on our calibrated system. Laptops are irreplaceable when you need them, but I'd hate to have only the laptop. The add-on monitor such as Preston suggests will be the least cost alternative.

Personally, I only use my laptop to look at my work or to copy the card when it is filled while I am away from home. Otherwise, I use the desktop for all my editing, etc.

I do 90% of my editing on a MacBook Pro. I have a high quality external CRT display, but find myself using it less and less. I've been using a Powerbook or MacBook Pro for over 6 years as my main system, so maybe I'm just used to it and "see" the corrected work in my minds eye.

I used Mac Pros with Apple 23" displays as work, but I'm still happy with my 15" laptop screen at home. But I've also been doing graphic design and prepress work for over 13 years, so I have a feel for what to expect most of the time without seeing it.

Wow! Thanks everyone for your help. I really like the idea of getting just a monitor and hooking it up to the laptop.

Thanks again!
Sandi

Sandi, your plan to get a monitor is good. However, I STRONGLY suggest you also get a large external HD to back up all your images. i have a tower computer and back up the images to an external drive. I then backup the images to DVD and an additional external drive which is stored off site. If you rely on a lap top as your main computer this is even more important as data can easily be lost with a crash of software or physical damage to the lap top itself.

We use LCD's almost exclusively because they work out so much better for client portfolio reviews. Clients respond better to LCD images, and consequently spend more money. As a result, we also do most of our editing on LCD's. I't always a shock to go back to one of our CRTs for editing. The LCD's are much easier on the eyes, and there doesn't seem to be any accuracy penalty for using them. It's hard to quanitfy, but to me prints always look closer to what I see on an LCD than they do when compared to a CRT. That's pretty nebulous, but it's an honest reaction. Maybe it would be better to write it off to my preference for LCD's.

From what I've read, very few companies are making CRTs anymore, and very few people are using them for graphics apps. LCDs have gotten so good that they have pretty much killed CRTs, so I'd definitely stick with a good LCD. (There are lots of crappy ones out there.)

Have a look at Fujitsu Siemens LCD's i've had one before a bought an eizo LCD and i must say that the color rendition on the Fujitsu was very close to what i see on the eizo now ! Especially when you calculate in the price difference.

Wim